Senior Bankers 'Would Rather Kill Their Mother Than Go To An Interview Without A PR Person'

Brett LoGiurato/Business Insider What could be a more appropriate way to conclude this series of interviews than with today's former PR officer? Almost all of the 90-plus interviews featured on this blog over the past two years had to be anonymised. And there would have been at least a dozen more posts had not interviewees been gripped by anxiety at the very last moment and pulled the interview. Today's interviewee was on the other side of that equation for nearly 10 years, at a number of "tier one" global banks:

How do we find out that bankers have spoken to the press without authorisation? There are external agencies that monitor the media for us. We flick through those.

What happens if they're caught?

There can be a disciplinary hearing and they can be fired, or disciplined. Sometimes it's more subtle. One time a senior trader took a call from a journalist, pre-crisis. When asked what it's like to work in London he passed the phone to a trainee who without thinking talked about the Ferrari, the flat, the restaurants … That senior banker had his promotion delayed by 12 months. There was the banker who had a habit of talking to the press without permission. He ended up on the front page of the FT. 'But the journalist said it was off the record,' he said. Yeah right. This guy never got promoted.

She added that: "At least in my bank enough people have been disciplined by now for unauthorised speaking to the press that it hardly happens any more."

I really recommend the full interview for its highly intelligent, nuanced appraisal of the kind of bankers rarely featured on this blog; the top people. In case you wondered why they never signed up for an interview with the Guardian banking blog:

Very senior bankers would rather kill their mother than go to an interview without a PR person. We act as witnesses and set the rules. Before the interview we will agree on the topics. If a journalist veers away it's my job to step in: 'Nice try but he's not gonna answer that.'

If these quotes make PR officers seem like sinister manipulators do read the full interview because that's not how it sounds when you see the full context. Also there is a logic to banks' attempts to control the outward flow of information. As the interviewee puts it: its reputation is a bank's core asset.

Generally journalists don't like to publicise, let alone criticise each other's shortcomings. Which can make it quite refreshing to read this:

Some journalists are in it just for the fun. Get taken out for a flashy meal and free wine. The good ones prefer to meet in the bank. They want to be in a space where bankers feel comfortable, so they forget they're talking to a journalist.

But my favourite quote is about some journalists' understanding of the mentality in banks. Let's first set the scene. Senior bankers may be terrified of getting misquoted, the interviewee explains, but they love to see their name in the papers.

Senior bankers become really nice to us just before and after they get promoted to the level where they are allowed to talk to the press. Suddenly they realise that we have the power to put them in front of journalists - authorisation to speak to journalists can be another status symbol.

One outcome is that when journalists meet senior bankers in the context of an authorised interview in the presence of a PR officer, those journalists may get to see a side of that banker that is, shall we say, slightly one-sided?

Quite a few journalists go to work for banks, that's true. Why? There's better pay, sure. But it's also because journalists have no idea what they're in for. Sometimes I would come across one who had gone over to our side and he'd have this shell-shocked look. The first six months they are like, what the fuck? They had no idea because bankers were always really, really nice to them.